Arts Pick: MerleFest on the Road

MerleFest on the Road gives added exposure to the players at (the late) Doc Watson’s popular Americana music festival in Wilkesboro, North Carolina. Chicago’s soulful five-piece The Way Down Wanderers, laidback Nashville bluegrass act The Barefoot Movement, and seasoned folk musician Andy May, carry the torch in an ensemble show that previews the April event’s 30th anniversary offerings. $18-20, 6pm. The Southern Café and Music Hall, 103 S. First St. 977-5590.

Cass McCombs Tip of the Sphere (ANTI-) The opener of Tip of the Sphere is an interesting mongrel—half Irish folk mantra, half space rock, and ending with three minutes of Jerry-Garcia-circa-1972 wah guitar. All of which sort of sets the tone for Cass McCombs’ latest. There’s easy loping folk on

Vanessa German grew up in Los Angeles in a creative household, wearing clothes her artist mother made, writing stories, and crafting creations from the scrap materials her mom laid out on the dining room table for her and her siblings. “We were makers as a way of life,” says German, the 2018

Across two LPs and five years of nonstop touring, Houndmouth made a name for itself as a troupe of sonic time travelers. After performing at SXSW in 2012, the Indiana band signed to Rough Trade Records and dropped its debut album, From the Hills Below the City, the following year. Full of

Short film blocks are often the highlight of any film festival, but when the Academy Awards come around, audiences are less familiar with them than with other categories. Here’s a rundown of this year’s nominees. Animated Short It would be easy to crown Pixar’s delightful Bao the early favorite

Raised in the fertile musical region of Galax, Virginia, Dori Freeman was never far from the sound of a bluegrass tune. She began to sing and play at a young age, and despite entering college and becoming a single mom, she gravitated to the role of musician. After a bold move—Freeman reached

Big things happen when The Suffers go to work on their fusion of jazz, R&B, reggae, and funk. The eight-piece act plays Gulf Coast soul defined by the sultry vocals of Kam Franklin, whose warmth is so energetic she was asked to be a spokeswoman for tourism in the group’s hometown of

In Hedda Gabler, Henrik Ibsen crafted a painfully real representation of the 19th-century angel in the house. Stripped of her individuality, Hedda is repressed by her roles as daughter and wife. The production channels themes of subtle misogyny through love, rage, and a gripping sense of

London’s National Theatre Live broadcasts I’m Not Running, a new play from critically acclaimed playwright David Hare. The drama centers around Pauline Gibson (Siân Brooke, right), a doctor turned politician who has her life turned upside down after a run-in with a stalwart loyalist of the

It’s hard to decide what deserves your attention at a Falsies concert. Is it the music? The musicians themselves, constantly swapping guitars for saxophones, for drums, for keyboards? Or is it band founder Lance Brenner in his yellow chicken suit, gesticulating wildly while shoving a microphone

Winter gray getting you down? Les Yeux du Monde offers a potent dose of Southwestern heat in the form of paintings by Russ Warren and sculptures by Ed Haddaway that will banish those February blues. The two artists, who are native Texans, met as students at the University of New Mexico in 1971,

Zyahna Bryant became an activist about three years before she wrote the petition to remove the Robert E. Lee statue and rename Lee Park in 2016. It was the day after George Zimmerman’s acquittal for second-degree murder charges in the shooting death of Trayvon Martin, when Bryant, then age 12,

Blues on the side: A gospel singer as a child, Jontavious Willis made a life-changing discovery around age 14 when he came across a YouTube video of Muddy Waters’ “Hoochie Coochie Man.” The Georgia native became an instant fan, and began his mastery of the Delta, Piedmont, and Texas blues,

World classical: Conductor Benjamin Rous leads the Charlottesville Symphony at the University of Virginia through a whirlwind of global experiences, beginning with the slow processional dance of Maurice Ravel’s Pavane for a Dead Princess, followed by Siempre Lunes, Siempre Marzo (Always Monday,

Waltz with me:Wes Swing says the intention behind his Fern Hill concert series is to present beautiful music in beautiful spaces, offering “qualities I’d like to see more of in the world of music.” His latest endeavor, A Tribute to Waltz, showcases the enchantment of the dance, and invites the

Art in a white-walled gallery can take on an aura of total separation from the person who made it, and the context in which that person worked. For that matter, so can murals seen from the car—so often, we’re looking at art in a vacuum. Here’s an antidote: Second Street Gallery’s current show,

Hollywood offscreen: In a throwback to the pre-pixel days of entertainment, the Pretty Things Vaudeville Show wows from the stage with sword swallowers, contortionists, and traditional magic. The Hollywood-based ensemble features the mind-reading dog Scraps, and the daring Rachel Atlas, whose

DAWN New Breed (Young Action) Danity Kane veteran Dawn Richard has forged a reputation as an R&B iconoclast, collaborating with Dirty Projectors and working on Adult Swim. Here she puts forth her NOLA roots with wizened old- people’s voices at the start of several songs—though New Breed

Based in blues: Musically prolific multi-instrumentalist David Bromberg has gigged with Bob Dylan, George Harrison, and Jerry Garcia, but he owes his eclecticism to blues and gospel singer Reverend Gary Davis. Bromberg studied under Davis in the ’60s, and developed the unique style of

The age of social media is rife with oversharing; dominated by a virtual playground where foodstagrams and political Facebook fights abound—and any semblance of privacy is tenuously maintained by CAPTCHAs and digital passwords. Los Angeles band Dawes explores this concept on its latest album,

Director Karyn Kusama is one of the most interesting directors working today who is not a household name. Her most well-known movies—the groundbreaking Girlfight, the misunderstood Jennifer’s Body and the underseen The Invitation—are very-different-but-terrific showcases for her as a